What is Interactivity?
Chris Crawford’s and Bret Victor’s different definition of what interactivity is have shed a bright light on my meaning of what interactivity is. Prior to week 1 reading assignments my definition of interactivity is more of a responsive’s definition.I agree with Crawford’s 3 main component that makes up interactivity, Listen, Think, and Speak, and no trade off of each. All of them must exist in order to achieve good interaction. At the same time, I also agree with Victor that we should carefully look and analyze our hand movement to create great interaction rather than just point and slide our fingers on the lit glass.
“Interaction: a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, speak”, Chris Crawford
“I believe that hands are out future”, Bret Victor
Although, I don’t completely understand and cannot define it as concise as the two writers, I am going to use navigation tools as an example to try to explain what interactivity is since I used them all the time.
- Paper Map
- Apple Map App
- Google Map App
- GPS Navigation for cars
I have used all of the above tools to get myself from point A to B to C and so on. At some point, I had even used all of them at the same time. Out of all the above selections, I have found that Google Map is the most useful, then Apple Map, GPS, and paper map the least useful to me.
Google Map and Apple Map are relatively the same in terms of interactivity in both Crawford’s and Victor’s definition, but one major factor that Google Map has over Apple Map that I found mot useful is an arrow direction. This arrow feature is very handy when I don’t know where I am going and just want to sightsee or wander around the city. Apple Map also has an arrow key feature but it will only show once the user has typed down the destination.
GPS Navigation android was quite popular in my home country when it came out during an iPhone3 period. It is much cheaper than getting a smart phone, however, I learned that nothing can compare to iPhone’s navigation apps. GPS Navigation android is perfectly functional but most of them don’t offer voice search so it does not listen. In addition, it's alternative word search is much slower than Google/Apple Maps App, especially when it tried to guess the word I am typing in Thai or any other languages with a lot more syllables and symbols that is not English or Chinese (since most of the cheap GPS android are made in China I assumed that it would guess Chinese much better). Therefore, its thinking speed is at a much lower scale of interactivity as Crawford claimed. Lastly, it does not offer alternate routes. If GPS navigation android is a human, it can only speak 1 languages while Google/Apple Maps App are fluent in all of the languages offer.
Well, Crawford clearly explain why a book isn’t interactive and I conform to his explanation, therefore plain old paper map is not interactive. Even if I’m in a situation where my phone ran out of battery and paper map is the last resort I have to use I still wouldn’t use it. I’ll simply ask a nice look strangers for directions. But then again, kind strangers are hard to come by these days.
Since Victor mentioned interactivity in a context of the future, his idea of focusing more on human nature on how we use our hands and fingers as the key instrument that drives interaction design. This makes me think of VR and AR technologies to be implemented into navigation apps to plan our route instead. I don’t have a clear understanding on this but it is something I would like to research further.
From where I stand, I agree with Crawford’s 3 key factors, Listen, Think, and Speak, and no trade off of each. All of them must exist in order to achieve good interaction. At the same time, I also agree with Victor that we should carefully look and analyze our hand movement to create great interaction rather than just point and slide our fingers on the lit glass.
To sum up, I think interactivity is something that serves a purpose of a user as fast as it can while offering alternative choices to the users.
